User blog:ChishioKunrin/Maidens - Origin of Dust and the Kingdoms?
Forgive me for the way I'm laying this out. I'm basically looking at a disorganized train-of-thought list of notes I slapped down while trying to make sense of a hypothesis I came up with late at night after the episode 6 Sponsors release. I still haven't been able to work out everything about this theory. My theory began with the hypothesis of "What if Dust comes from the 'magic residue' of Maidens' souls?" Origin of Dust I ended up finding myself questioning if Dust existed at the time that the old man gave the original four Maidens their powers. Let's assume that it didn't. Let's pretend that, every time a Maiden dies, the wealth of immense magical power attached to her soul leaves some kind of "magic residue" that seeps into the ground, crystalizes, and forms Dust. *4 Maidens - 4 main types of Dust, which are the only naturally-occurring types. *WoR: Dust says that no one knows where Dust comes from, what it's made of, or how using it might affect the world of Remnant. *Glynda said that Maidens have existed for thousands of years. How many millenia, we don't know, but that would probably be enough time for a large amount of Dust to build up, right? *Later on, it's explained that Maidens used to be known about, but then it was decided that they should be a secret. Glynda said that the knowledge of Maidens' existence goes against hundreds of years of history and religion. So, the Maidens have been secret for centuries, long enough for people to lose track of a possible piece to the puzzle of Dust's origin. *Ozpin said that Maidens are able to use immense power without Dust, and that it's not Semblance. *Monty compared Dust to Materia. Materia is a type of object in Final Fantasy 7, which can be used to cast spells. It's made of Mako energy, which is drawn from the Lifestream, which... as I understand it, from my fuzzy memory of FF7, is not just the planet's life force, but also where souls go when people die. It has already been theorized by fans many times that Dust comes from souls, but what if it doesn't come from ordinary souls, just Maidens' souls? I've been having a hard time trying to connect the four Maidens to the seasons and the main types of Dust. It seems that the four main types of Dust are *Fire *Water (Miles said water + air = ice, so ice isn't a main type) *Lightning *Air The order Pyrrha listed the seasons in at the end of the story seems to match up fairly well to the order that she described their actions in. So, my best guess for what season each Maiden connects to is: *Winter = White. This just makes sense, from a color standpoint, as well as the quiet meditation on solitude. *Spring = Green. She brought the old man fruits and flowers and revitalized his garden. Springtime is when flowers and many fruits begin to grow. *Summer = Orange. She warmed the old man's heart. Warmth = heat = summer. *Autumn = Purple. The color doesn't make much sense, but... She begged him to look at what he has and be thankful. Perhaps appreciate what he has before it's gone, just as the leaves fall from the trees and everything gives way to the cold, dead silence of winter? These are the main Dust types I think they're connected to: *Winter = Water. Water turns to ice. *Spring = Lightning. Springtime brings rain and storms. *Summer = Fire. Heat. *Autumn = Air. Wind blows the leaves from the trees. That said, if the fiery power Cinder has isn't just Dust... Either *The Maidens aren't limited to the element of the main Dust type they're connected to. *Cinder is the Summer Maiden and seeks to gain powers from the other three Maidens, so she stole part of the Autumn Maiden's power. *Cinder stole part of the Summer Maiden's power and, like I said, seeks to gain powers from the other three Maidens. They could have other powers than just elemental ones. They might not even be limited to the element of the main Dust type they're connected to, especially when we consider that the nature of Dust allows for new types to be made by mixing them. Right now, we just don't have much to go on. If Cinder has Summer Maiden powers, how does this fit in with people's theory that Summer Rose was a Summer Maiden? Well... *There's the theory that Summer was murdered. Cinder would've been too young at the time to be the killer (the crew said Cinder isn't much older than the Beacon students, so she's probably in her early 20s). Ironwood said that it's not uncommon for the last thoughts of the slain to be of their attacker. Summer's last thoughts could've been of her murderer, especially if the finishing blow was quick and she saw their face right before she died. *It's also possible that Summer intentionally focused her thoughts on someone other than Ruby, not wanting to burden Ruby with the responsibility of being a Maiden. Maybe she intentionally thought of someone unsuitable, like Taiyang, thus making the powers go to someone random. It's also possible that she unintentionally thought of someone unsuitable. So, with these two possibilities in mind, either: *The random person was Cinder. *The random person/killer passed the power on to Cinder. *Cinder stole part of the random person/killer's power. As I said before, I haven't figured everything out, and I doubt I'll be able to as things stand right now. So, with what little we have at the moment, this part is... convoluted, I guess I could say? The Kingdoms Thinking about the Maidens and Dust somehow led to me thinking about the formation of the Kingdoms. Four Maidens, four Kingdoms... If Dust didn't exist at the time of the original four Maidens, what if the reason that only four civilizations survived is because each of the four Maidens spread out and protected civilizations in four regions? After all, like I pointed out above, Glynda said that Maidens have existed for thousands of years. The Maidens protected the Kingdoms from the Grimm. Time passed, Maidens died, new Maidens stepped forward to protect the people. Eventually, someone discovered Dust, and the people began learning how to wield Dust. They stood with the Maidens and helped them fight off the Grimm, unaware of what they were really using. The problem is figuring out which Maiden went to which Kingdom. The colors don't really match up very well. The color coding difference could just be so it wouldn't be too obvious. After all, if the original Maidens were the same exact colors as the the colors representing the four Kingdoms, we would all immediately assume this stuff, right? With what we have right now with the colors, an obvious guess would be that Spring (Green) went to Vale, Summer (Orange) went to Vacuo, Winter (White) went to Mantle (Atlas), and Autumn (Purple) went to Mistral, by process of elimination. I'm not sure we can guess who went where based on the fact that the current Autumn Maiden is in Vale, since Maidens can be chosen randomly and thus could be chosen from all over the world. We could look at it in another light, with the environments of the four Kingdoms and say... *Vacuo = Summer Maiden because of the desert and its heat. *Vale = Autumn Maiden because of Forever Fall Forest. *Atlas = Winter Maiden because of the snowy climate. *Mistral = Spring Maiden because of process of elimination, as well as the apparent wet climate, considering Qrow mentioned there being swamps around there. ' December 15 Edit': So, it was brought to my attention by Omegafire17 in a comment thread that the purple Maiden (who I'm assuming is Autumn) resembles the purple woman in WoR: Huntsmen, who could be the woman on the statue in front of Beacon. She has a cape and a very similar, if not identical, hair style. Category:Blog posts